Opportunities in your hand

Bringing the power of volunteering into the hands of volunteers across Australia

A mobile app for volunteers

Volunteering in Australia needed to reach out to younger generations and research showed that they were more comfortable using native mobile apps. The brief was to build an iOS and Android app that allowed volunteers to have an account that remembered their interests and skills, to recommend opportunities.

The Pitch

Having worked for the last seven years in the Australian volunteering sector, we knew the direction the app needed to go in. In creating the Volunteer Profile, we had already developed the framework for what we wanted to achieve with the app.

We had been trialling the Volunteer Profile as an independent service on the GoVolunteer website with a successful uptake from volunteers. It allowed volunteers to create an account, save their preferences and view recommended opportunities. The Volunteer Profile API linked in to the national volunteering database that fed GoVolunteer and the vast amount of volunteering across Australia, meaning it opened up flexibility for organisations as well as volunteers.

As the Volunteer Profile was Eduka's own creation, it was pitched that the logic would become part of the volunteering app along with a simple user interface and a new icon, branding it GoVolunteer.

Technology and smarts:

The Result

We built the iOS and Android app with simplicity in mind, making the process of finding and applying for opportunities take as few steps as possible. The focus of the app is the volunteer positions, so it made sense to show the positions first, and trouble the user with registration later on. Once they had set up a profile, we used their preferences to recommend opportunities.

Given this design, we created an app that removes barriers and makes it easier than ever to start volunteering - putting the opportunities in the volunteer's hands!

The client said:

The consultant said:

The GoVolunteer App has been an exciting project for us as it nicely sums up all the years of work we have done with Volunteering WA and SEEK Volunteer, building a way for Australian volunteering organisations to easily post their available opportunities. Now we have one true national volunteer network and are offering volunteers opportunities in their hand, whatever their skills or interests.

The developer said:

Undertaking the GoVolunteer app was a great experience. We successfully managed to translate almost all aspects of the current Volunteer Profile into a mobile application, allowing users to connect and search the largest national volunteering database in Australia. Volunteers can manage their profile, and with the help of opportunities from SEEK Volunteer, look through and apply for thousands of opportunities all from the one app.

The designer said:

It was a fun experience designing the app, and thrilling to watch wireframes become a fully functioning app.

A lot of time was spend researching and prototyping, to come up with the best user journey, as we want Australians to connect with organisations as easily as possible. The colour scheme and iconography remained simple and easily recognisable to let the content sing.